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Saturday, January 26, 2013

I'm popping off to Scotland for a week, so the blog will be as blank as Olly Murs' manuscript in a maths exam. To tide you over to the 4th of February, here are a few songs I would have blogged about if there'd been more time.

1) Justin Timberlake - Suit and Tie
This is the lyric video to the audio track that was teased in a Youtube clip spawned from a tweet. All this faffing about would be worth it if the song was slap-you-on-the-tits amazing, but sadly it's still just a 5/10. *sigh*

2) Laura Mvula - Green Garden
Of all the artists on this year's Sound Of 2013 predictapolls, Laura Mvula is the one with the most potential to do an Adele. Hip enough for Radio 1, edgy enough for 6 Music and soothing enough for Radio 2, she's got what I like to call "potential". She also has an incredible voice and amazing songs. Green Garden takes a while to get going, but you'll be swooning by the final, exuberant chorus.

3) Zedd ft Foxes - Clarity
Zedd is a German producer who's been working on Lady Gaga's new album.
Foxes is British songstress Louisa Rose Allen, who we like a lot.
Together they are "Zedd ft Foxes".
And this song is fucking great. Sand dunes ahoy!

4) Jessie Ware - If You're Never Gonna Move (Two Inch Punch remix)
This song used to be called 110% but, for some reason, it's been renamed If You're Never Gonna Move for the US release. Clearly, the new name is a line from the chorus, which is useful for the sort of person who goes into a record shop and says "I heard this song on the radio and it sort of went duh duh duh duh If You're Never something a-a-ah. Do you have it?" Except the only line anyone can ever remember from 110% is "Dancing On My Own" which is a completely different but equally brilliant song. And anyway, the record shops are all closed nowadays and you can just Shazam the song off the radio, so why bother changing the name in the first place? Gah!

The remix, by the way, is excellent: All ambient and spookified. And only available in the US. Double gah!

5) Lana Del Rey - Summertime Sadness (Monsieur Adi remix)
Do you think Lana approves of this? She spends ages cultivating her doe-eyed, pouty-lipped pop vixen persona, then someone waps her vocals on top of a honking bassline and makes her sound like the queen of the carnival. A carnival populated by the cast of Glee and 10,000 other people with the permanently startled expression of Scooby Doo with a jack-in-the-box.

But who cares what she thinks? It's big, dumb, mindless, and infuriatingly catchy.

6) REM - Losing My Religion
Major Scaled is a project whereby songs in a "sad" minor key are digitally tweaked so they're in a "cheerful" major key. The results are quite startling. You can recognise and follow the songs, but something's not quite right. They've posted a bunch of examples on their Facebook page - but REM's Losing My Religion (recast as Rediscovering My Religion) is the best of the bunch.